Digital resources in the Social Sciences and Humanities OpenEdition Our platforms OpenEdition Books OpenEdition Journals Hypotheses Calenda Libraries OpenEdition Freemium Follow us

The Turkestan Album: War and Peace of Maps and Photographs


The Russian campaign in Central Asia can be viewed as an episode in the long history of this territory. Claiming the city of Tashkent in 1865, the fortress of Samarkand in 1868 and the Khanate of Khiva in 1873 were all ground-breaking events of Central Asia’s incorporation into the Russian Empire (cf. fig. 1), impulsive and unsystematic as it was. What may have begun as an intimidating declamation has become a celebration of new technologies for its own sake. While placing my analysis in the debate on Russian colonialism, I wish to follow a visual framework by seeking to identify its cartographic and photographic manifestations and thus charting the colony as a differentiated space of centres and peripheries. Central Asia was characterized by ambiguities, and so was the 19th-century Russian Empire as a whole: it displayed substantial regional variation, and while it strove for a visual cartographic consistency, it limped on political incongruity.

Fig. 1: Eugene Schuyler: Map of the Khanate of Bukhara, Khiva and Kokand and the Part of Russian Turkestan. According to the Latest Topographical Surveys and Astronomical Determinations, London 1875.
Library of Congress. Link↗

Intellectual, Technical and Moral Difficulties behind the Album

As a result of new economic and political factors in the development of the Russian attitude towards Central Asia, a widespread impulse was given to the furtherance of Russian imperialist designs all over the young colony, including maps and photographs. Once Russian Turkestan gradually came into prominence as the field where the main Russian effort was to secure itself, it became evident that Russia was overreaching herself, exposing her colonial ambitions too briskly. This is particularly evident through the photographic material which overshadows the cartographic documentation by centering the campaign’s most significant production, the Turkestan Album (1871/72, fig. 2), often seen as a complex project of ambitions, skills and visions commanded by the first governor of Russian Turkestan, Konstantin von Kaufmann (1818–1882, fig. 3). By the time the Russian campaign has reached its zenith in 1865, photography had replaced painting, the camera had earned respect, overrode easel, and by and large has changed the system of depiction and categorization for the region. With the developments of infrastructure and communication across the Empire and laying the railroad up to the Caspian Sea (1879–1906), Russia was able to demonstrate the level of new technology and knowledge of her surveyors and engineers. Railway tracks were purpose-built, routed and constructed at certain gradients, on limited curves, and unimpeded by obstacles like steppes and deserts. They demanded power and authority over men and nature alike: “The conquest of space led inexorably to the reorganization of time” (Judt 2010: 60).

Fig. 2: Title page of the Turkestan Album.
Fig. 3: Konstantin von Kaufmann.
Wikimedia Commons: https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Von_Kaufman_portrait.jpg

The Album is described by scholars as consisting of six books, divided into sections on archaeology, ethnography, local industry, the region’s history, architecture and antiquities. Exceeding 1200 photographic images, the Album also features 21 watercolours, 14 architectural plans, and 13 military-topographical maps. The Album’s appointed supervisor Aleksey L. Kun deprioritized cartographic information, evaluating the still modest photographic and cartographic market of Central Asia which was not yet dominated by the commercial processes of making images. The making of unique images on silver-coated plates was still expensive and required expertise, and the local administration had limited access to the technical and optical devices manufactured outside Russia. The importation of lenses, albumen and carbon paper, glass plates and chemical products presented further difficulties. The continuous efforts to simplify the carto-photographic processes for catering to a wider audience, who could afford the results, were creditable but inevitably slow, and the discussions around the implementation of photography into cartographic practices and vice versa just started getting off the ground.

However, some treasures came to light: the principal compiler of the Album’s historical part (fig. 4), Michail A. Terentiev, included several county maps of Semirechie, Zaravshansk and Samarkand with his elegant cross-sections of specific areas (fig. 5–7), diagrams of canals and drainage systems. These are interspersed with photographs of the same sites by the local photographer N. Nekhoroshev. Placed opposite Terentiev’s depictions, they emphasized his expertise to converge and translate history into maps and photos.

Fig. 4: Cover of the “Historical Part” of the Album.
Fig. 5: Turkestan Album, Historical Part, Map of the Siege of the Samarkand Fortress.
Fig. 6: Turkestan Album, Historical Part, Map of the Siege and Assault of Tashkent.
Fig. 7: Turkestan Album, Historical Part, Samarkand Fortress and the Mausoleum.

Aside from its integral propaganda qualities, Konstantin von Kaufmann saw his Album’s function as largely educational. He did not find it necessary to elaborate on the merits of his photographic and cartographic team, listing his closest collaborators only by names without their professional status. A larger group of photographers, surveyors and technical officers remained in oblivion.

Aleksey Ili’in and the Furtherance of Colonial Documentation

The colonial spectacle presented in the Album included 13 maps, many in colours. But if one looks carefully, almost all of them were outdated by the time the Album came to light as they were designed between 1865 and 1867 to support the Russian colonial activities. Why such discrepancy? There is a number of reasons. One is the Turkestan governor-generalship itself: as a precarious colonial office under the tight supervision of the 8th or, Asiatic, department, it was controlled financially and administratively by the Ministry of War, reporting directly to the War Minister Dmitry Milutin in Saint Petersburg. A close ally and relentless supporter of General von Kaufmann, Miliutin assisted his inexorable exploration and enumeration of Russia’s own natural environment at the time of the colonial campaign, engaging in classification and ordering of Turkestan’s geological palette. The state of sciences was different, of course, in Turkestan and in Saint Petersburg, but the goal was identical: accumulating more knowledge. Other reasons were, amongst others, the lack of sustained communication between the cartographers in Saint Petersburg and Central Asia, the strained relationship between the commanders and administrators, and the limited printing facilities in situ.

The services of the General Staff demanded impeccability, both in education and upbringing alongside the unblemished working excellence at the appointed positions. One of such individuals was Aleksey Ili’in (1834–1889), the future proprietor of an inventive cartographic establishment in Saint Petersburg. Son of a nobleman, Ili’in was born near the Shlisselburg Fortress and brought up as a Russian officer par excellence, aiming for the entry in the General Staff (1856). The historian Nikolas Glinoetzky gave a lovely account of Ili’in’s life in the Historical Essay of 1882, first as a cadet at the Nikolaev Academy of the General Staff, and, later as an officer: “At twenty-four he became a partner of the Colonel Vladimir Poltoratzky (1830–1886) at the General Staff who established the carto-lithographic publishing house in Saint Petersburg and assigned Ili’in to compile the first atlas for the War of 1812. Soon after, Ili’in’s name appeared on the title of the famous Map of Asiatic Russia (scale: 1:10,500,000 and a format of 78 × 51 cm) in several editions (fig. 8). When Poltoratzky left for Russian Turkestan as a governor-general of Semipalatinsk, Ili’in assumed the sole ownership of the lithographic house which specialized on the Russian imperial military, imperial and colonial maps. This allowed him to accept commissions from scientific, statistical and security departments of various Russian ministries, as well as the alpine, postal and telegraph societies, the Russian Academy of Science and the Russian Geographic Society. Ili’in was already looking ahead, navigating the visual-artistic element toward business. He summarized his concerns about the Asiatic territories which he visited briefly for the inspection of the canals and railroad system, in the appeal to A. Voiejkov and I. Strelbitzky, two innovative scientists and officers, to investigate further the regional infrastructure. Ili’in’s career as a cartographer, surveyor and successful map-publisher came to a new level, when he became engaged with the production of cartographic material for educational purposes, based on recent publications abroad. His plan to improve cartographic practices in Russia included handbooks on trigonometry, fortification and artillery; he offered popular and professional digests on physical dynamics and mechanics, printed courses on military tactics popularizing war theatres and distributing concise encyclopedias on numerous aspects of military science.

Fig. 8: Section of: Andrej Aleksandrovich Bolshev: Karta Aziatskoy Rossii s prilegayushchimi k ney vladeniyami sostavlena pri Voyenno-topograficheskom otdele Glavnogo shtaba (Map of Asiatic Russia with Adjoining Regions, Compiled by the Military-Topographic Department of the General Staff, Saint Petersburg 1884.
Gotha Research Library, SPK 30.02.02 C (03), fol. 5. Link↗

By then, Ili’in was exploring new cartographic fields and ideas, inspired by Jacques Elisee Reclus (1830–1905), an eminent French geographer whose work about the history of the earth was praised as a triptych of geographic, climatic and ethnographic data with an important statistical component (demographic population, peoples’ occupations in accordance with geography). Reclus’s work profoundly influenced Ili’in’s perspective on cartography which he regarded as a masterpiece of sciences.

Trigonometrical surveys which Ili’in called for were not conducted before the Album’s publication, but a step towards the Russian rule over its Asian territories was done, indicating that Russian Turkestan was viewed conceptually and as a whole. Maps – as well as the photographs – held the power of projecting political perspectives, commending the General Staff’s accomplishments.

It was mandatory for the Turkestan governor-generalship that the images should not reflect the past, but rather focus on the building process of the territory. By subjugating the territory with a comprehensive reform agenda, the General Staff showed a just cause for the carto-photographic documentation which fully justified the colonial rule. Both, official and semi-official local and, therefore, improvising practices participated in the production of the Album.

The conquest of Central Asia was integral to the making of the Russian nation through its transformation into a Russian colony. Mapping, just as photography, played an important role in this constitutive process of empire-nation-building. Cartographic and photographic propaganda in Russia between 1865 and 1914 is telling material how even tentative maps or suggestive photographs can look like when constructing a national identity.

In this regard, both cartography and photography could manipulate, select, idealize and direct ideas and opinions. Maps and photographs reveal personal experiences of interaction with the land and the people who inhabited it, but above all, they reveal imperial perspectives.

References and further reading

Bagrow, Leo: History of the Cartography of Russia up to 1600, Wolfe Island 1975.

Delamaire, Stephanie, Will Slauter: Circulation and Control. Artistic Culture and Intellectual Property in the Nineteenth Century, Cambridge (UK) 2021.

Istoriya material’noy kul’tury Uzbekistana (Journal of the History of the Material Culture of Uzbekistan), Tashkent and Samarkand sections.

Izvestiya Sredakomstari: Иzvestiia Sredne-Aziatskogo Komiteta po delam muzev i okhrany pamiatnikov stariny iskusstva i prirody, Tashkent 1928.

Kouteinikova, Inessa: Central Asia on Display. Photographing, Exploring, Exhibiting Russian Turkestan, London 2023.

Kuhn, Aleksandr L. (ed.): Turkestan Album, Taschkent 1872.

Mayzel, Matitiahu: The Formation of the Russian General Staff, 1880–1917. A Social Study, in: Cahiers du Monde Russe et Sovietique 16 (1975), pp. 297–321.

Morrison, Alexander: Russian Conquest of Central Asia. A Study in Imperial Expansion, 1814–1914, Cambridge 2020.

Glinoetzky, Nikolas: Istoricheskiy ocherk Nikolayevskoy akademii General’nogo shtaba, Saint Petersburg 1882.

Volkow, S. V.: Russkyy ofitserskiy korpus (Russian Officer Corps), Moscow 1993.

Shibanov, Fyodor: Studies in the History of Russian Cartography. Vol. 2: From the History of Russian Cartography in the 18th, 19th, and Early 20th Centuries, Toronto 1975.

Judt, Tony: The Glory of the Rails, in: The New York Review of Books, https://www.nybooks.com/articles/2010/12/23/glory-rails/ (accessed: 04.04.2025).

Sokolov, V.: Zerkalo Rossii [starinnyye geograficheskiye karty iz sobraniya A.L. Kusakina] (The Mirror of Russia [An Exhibition of Geographical Maps from the Private Collection of A. Kusakin]), in: Nashe Nasledie (Our Heritage) 63/64 (2002), pp. 34–41.

Zapiski Vostochnogo otdeleniia Russkogo arckheologicheskogo Obschestva (Notes of the Orientalist department of the Russian Archeological Society), Saint Petersburg 1867–1881.


OpenEdition suggests that you cite this post as follows:
Inessa Kouteinikova (April 4, 2025). The Turkestan Album: War and Peace of Maps and Photographs. Mapping Africa and Asia. Retrieved May 12, 2025 from https://doi.org/10.58079/13pw0


Inessa Kouteinikova

Dr. Kouteinikova has been researching, publishing and teaching on photographic histories and techniques, museum concepts, colonial cultures and Orientalism for more than two decades. Her professional experience, art and architecture education inform her writing, and her research is based on assembly of both data and the material objects. She works for private collections.

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *

This site uses Akismet to reduce spam. Learn how your comment data is processed.